Emmanuel looked at Chigo with anger. Didn't she know that we are barely managing, yet she decided to get pregnant? Another eight children will follow and she will be expecting me to salvage some food for her-in this situation?
He hissed and tugged at his whiskers.
"I aam going for the meeting." He announced before exiting his burrow.
As he headed for the meeting, Emmanuel thought about his life. The life of a rat is supposed to be simple: be born, eat, have sex and die. The little complication in this simple routine is if the rat you f*cked was pregnant and gave birth. Then you have to provide food for her and her simps until they are old enough to run around. The Earth was your home and humans were your unwilling and unknowing providers of food.
That was how it was.
But with recession hitting the country hard, the humans had started to reduce their food supplies. Bins that were full of leftovers were now running empty. And with the arrival of Sussie, the world was now becoming bleaker for rats everywhere.
Sussie was the baddest bitch in the hood and that's saying a lot when you consider that there are actual bitches. Unlike humans who are a walking siren when they move, Sussie's steps are always silent, deliberate and calculated- always ten steps of any rat. Any and all rats that ever fell to her claws never lived to tell the tale.
Previously, Sussie was the terror of the streets. Emmanuel remembered how he joined other house rats to laugh at the street rats because of Sussie. But now she has been adopted by the Anyanwus,who are the only ones rich enough to have leftovers in their bins. To combat this new development was the reason why all the rats, both street and house rats were meeting in the underground burrow
He could hear shouting as he got close to the meeting place. What was happening?
"What's the noise about?" He asked a street rat.
"It's about Sussie. Someone is asking us to fight her."
"Who is the idiot? Doesn't he know that we are rats?"
"It's Nwaka."
Nwaka was the fattest rat in the neighborhood and other rats listen to him because of that. Emmanuel braced himself for more stupidity
"Listen, listen, we can do it. We just need to poison her and when she is weak, we can pounce on her."
"Do you know what poison is?" Emmanuel countered. "Does anyone here knows what it is? This is madness!"
"What do you suggest?" Nwaka eyed him.
"I suggest we leave the area and relocate. We will never win a fight against Sussie. There are many other rich people in Lagos. It won't be easy but-"
"You are saying this because your wife is pregnant again. Please don't lead us with your wife's pregnancy!"
The burrow erupted with laughter and hisses. Emmanuel tugged at his whiskers angrily. So he came to be ridiculed. He sat back and watched at Nwaka continued with his idiotic plan.
When they were done, he stood up to leave but Nwaka stopped him.
"I thought you will wait for our success. Oh wait, you have a wife to feed!" He and his volunteers burst into more laughter. Emmanuel allowed their laughter to wash over his head and watched as they left.
He decided to get to the surface to get fresh air befor thinking of what to do about Chigo's new pregnancy. As he stepped into the surface, he saw Koko, the fastest of the volunteers running with all the speed in his little legs.
"What happened?" Emmanuel asked.
"Sussie has eaten Nwaka!"
Emmanuel smiled, strolling happily back to the burrow with one song from the Nigerian duo known as P-square running in his mind.
*E don happen! *